gahhhhhhhhhh

Has it been almost a month since I last updated?! =O

Anyways, internal medicine has kept me busy... and sedated. Who needs sleeping pills when you're running around the VA all day and then you just completely zonk out as soon as you get home?!

Per request, I'm just going to post some pictures from the wedding! (So for those of you I don't talk to on a weekly basis or don't have access to my personal google calendar, I went to a wedding in San Diego this weekend with Tony. It was his friend's wedding and it was at the Darlington House in La Jolla

Gotta run peeps! Have a great weekend!!

Graduation!

Sooo close!! Hope ya'lls that were invited are coming!!

Why I love ebates!

Ebates just sent me a $10 giftcard for doing absolutely nothing! Hope ya'lls have all signed up!

day 89

day 89 (wednesday - march 30th): day 2 of internal med
So today was Day 2 of internal medicine. Went slightly smoother than Day 1 being that I get the hang of aminoglycoside dosing now. I still feel like a dozo though being that I don't commit to memory any of the guidelines. I got to make an intervention today which was pretty cool. So every week I go through antibiotics and make sure they are dosed correctly and the culture and sensitivies show that we are using a drug that the organism is sensitive to. So yesterday we found a patient on ertapenem with cultures pointing to Strep B. Today the sensitivities came back with the organism being sensitive to ampicillin. So my preceptor sent a note to the doctor telling him to change ertapenem to ampicillin :). We'll see if he'll actually change the drug.

After that, I went to my regional meeting which too a super long time. Then after that I went to happy hour. Now I'm back at home but I feel soooooo super sleepy :(. Probably going to call it and night and then study tomorrow morning for didactics (which is just another term for quiz).

day 88 - first day of internal med

day 88 (tuesday - march 29th): first day of internal med
So today was the first day of internal med - spinal cord injury with my preceptor Rebecca. Got to the VA at 8am to get my access code to use the computers. This took 2 hours but I was glad we went because I got to catch up with the girls I met yesterday who are all super nice! So after that, I paged my preceptor and she met me in the resident's room. After that we went back to her office, took a tour of the 3 spinal cord injury wards, and then got started with some antibiotic dosing checks. So I found out that I know absolutely NOTHING about PK dosing lol. My preceptor basically gave me a speed review of all PK things. So another thing I learned today was to embrace the saying, "I don't know... I'll look it up and get back to you." I reviewed aminoglycoside dosing later on when I went to Starbucks with Judy. I also tried to read over this article about HIT, which is heparin-induced-thrombocytopenia. Lots of stuff to do for this rotation :( Let's hope I survive!

Hope ya'lls have a great week!

P.S. Since it's Tony's birthday today, he's the guest blogger :P and here's what he thinks I do all day lol. 

Anthony: march 29th

  tony's bday

  booboo did not receive yellow package <---- i sent him a package in the mail 

 Anthony: and made me jelly by eating jjc <---- jjc = jamaican jerk chicken 

  

 me: i know!

10:27 PM Anthony: the end

Anthony: p.s. oh and i took my id picture

  the end, foreal.

 Anthony: BAM done

 me: i took that yesterday actually

 Anthony: guest blog complete

  eff

  ok

  p.s. id card made

  BAM

  done

  the end, foreal. again.

 me: the ID card making machine was broken lol

  so i have to wait until april 15th

  i have this nasty temp one

10:29 PM Anthony: nasty temp id made

  the end, foreal foreal. period.

  BAM

  done

 me: lol

10:30 PM Anthony: see how easy that was

  so simpoe

 me: seempoe

 Anthony: eggzachary

day 83-84

day 83 (thursday - march 24th): potluck at the VA
Second to the last day at the VA in Downtown LA. The preceptors had a potluck for us and me and the USC student got a cake for our preceptors. Nothing spectacular happened today.

day 84 (friday - march 25th): last day of rotation 5
Last day at the VA. Did our usual meter class in the morning and then Tony, the USC student had to leave so I spent the rest of the day cleaning up all the unfinished work we had with finishing up patients. I also took this time to print out all my paperwork for my next rotation at the VALB lol. I ended up filling out most of the paperwork and then my main preceptor came back from the USC Clerkship Fair (which is this fair they have for the USC students that tells them about the rotations available at each site) and so she gave my evaluation. I ended up getting an A (yay!) haha. But I had to do this SOAP note for the final and I got a 5.5 out of 10 lol. Good thing it was only worth 10% of my grade. For my case presentation one of the "constructive criticisms" was to say "you know" less bahahahaha. I try really hard to cut down the "likes" in my presentations but I guess I let the "you knows" slip haha.

I ended leaving at 4pm and started going to run my errands. I really like having one of the weekdays off because it gives me a chance to go to the bank, post office, etc. So I went to the bank to deposit some of the check I had from Ebates and a rebate from Costco for my contacts. Then I went to Supercuts. I got my haircut for free because if you get 8 haircuts, your 9th haircut is free :). Everything was going great until I was done with my haircut and I realized that I locked my keys in my car!! Hasn't happened in almost 2 years!! But yeah, I had to call my dad to bring me the spare keys.

After that little obstacle, I went home and changed to go out with Reena and Lois. We ended up going to this place off of Atlantic and Garvey called "The Open Door". I would not recommend going here unless you are extremely anorexic lol. There's like no food to eat!! Their happy our cocktails were yummy though. We got a carafe of their Mango Cocktail and Peach cocktail, both of which were delicious. We would have drank more but their food selection was so small! We were still hungry after that so we walked over the Thai Paradise off of Atlantic and had 2 small items. I guess we overestimated how hungry we were because we ended up having up leftovers haha. Then we walked over to Half & Half. I really like the Atlantic Half & Half because there isn't a huge crowd like the friggin San Gabriel one! wtf!

We called it a night after that and I pretty much got home and knocked the freak out.

Post to be continued....

day 80-82

When I got home on Saturday, I got this Thank You card from Anh & Gary :)

day 80 (monday - march 21st): patient handout due
Just another Monday. Nothing too special happened today except 3 pharmacists called in sick today. Went to Starbucks to study after dinner. I had to work on my patient presentation which was going to be due on Wednesday morning. Not much else happened.

day 81 (tuesday - march 22nd):
So I was supposed to have my final exam today for my rotation but they moved it to Wednesday. Nothing much happened. I got to interview a bunch or patients for the Smoking Cessation clinic which was fun. After work I went to study at Starbucks again except this time Judy joined me. I was really cutting it close with my presentation. I left Starbucks at 10pm and I still had 1 more disease state that I had to work on.

day 82 (wednesday - march 23rd): patient case presentation
Today was my patient case presentation which went HORRIBLY! Ok I'm not even joking around. So I get to work 30 minutes early and I'm looking over my presentation and looking at the finishing touches which are fine. I get into work to print out my lecture slides and I realized that the powerpoint presentation I sent myself didn't have ANY of the erectile dysfunction slides that I had worked on when I got home. I guess when I sent myself the presentation, I hadn't pushed "save" so it sent the presentation without any of the changes I made after I got home. After that I had to use my crappy version of the presentation that I had made for myself with all my little notes on what to talk about and such. So horrible. Then, they asked me all these clinical questions and of course I suck at anything clinical. Which is probably why I will die at internal med (my next rotation). It was just horrible. I felt like I was getting beat up in a fight. And then to make matters worse, I had this one patient that yelled at me and told me to shut-up on the phone when I was trying to go over his coumadin with him. He went into how he wanted to transferred because he was sick and tired of answering the same questions over and over again. Like, ok I get it. Everytime I call, I ask the same questions because it's standard procedure. He was getting so belligerent with me and he kept saying "are you just about done yet?!" And he threatened to hang up on me. I ended up getting a little teary-eyed and had to go to the restroom to calm myself down.

At 3pm I had to take the final exam which me and the other student thought was going to SOAPing out a case on coumadin since all we did was coumadin clinic. Turned out that it was SOAPing up 9 disease states which I was unfamiliar with :/. It was pretty much horrible.

After work I had to keep telling myself to go pick up the cake for my preceptors. It turned out pretty nice.

Ended the day very well though :). Ended up going to see Beauty and the Beast at The Pantages with Judy which was friggin awesome!! Loved it!! Seats were super nice in orchestra! Wish I could see it again before it leaves. I ended up buying a shirt, a key chain and a program. I really liked how they made Gaston super funny because I usually skip all the Gaston parts when I watch the movie. He's pretty annoying in the movie lol.

hope everyone has a great week! last rotation starts tomorrow baby!!

7 more weeks until graduation!!!